Edition:

The comedy of cruelty

At its peak, Are You Being Served? pulled in 22 million viewers. Following the death of John Inman, fans have praised the show as belonging to a more innocent age of TV. But in fact it was a cowardly, fear-filled sitcom, says Stuart Jeffries

It pains me to contradict Rula Lenska. However, yesterday she was among the eulogists to the late John Inman, with whom she starred in panto and sitcom. She described his comic style thus: "It had an innocent quality that you rarely find today." Innocent? I think not. I spent much of yesterday remembering an all-too-typical episode of Are You Being Served? called No Sale, in which Mr Humphries, played by Inman, told the menswear department how he'd spent a naughty-sounding weekend with a stringvestite, a trendy bishop, a roving reporter and a dustman. What is a stringvestite? Trust me, there's no such thing: it's a parody of perversion. It's the mockery by straight men of homosexuality which, in their minds, is intrinsically linked to fetishism. To make that presumed fetishism ridiculous and deprive it of its subversive power, they clothe it in daftness - in string vests or kiss-me-quick hats (Humphries was wearing the latter during the weekend, too).

Are You Being Served? never had the courage of its own homophobia, but preferred to express it through double entendres, nods and winks. Why was Mr Humphries consorting with such a crew? The suggestion was that limp-wristed men like Mr H were always hanging out with such dodgy characters, doing things that right-thinking people would only read about in the News of the Screws.

It is an ingenious kind of humour, to be sure, but was one filled with fear. The same applies to Mrs Slocombe's pussy, the double entendre that worked by sanctioning the hate-filled, fearful stereotype of a no-win woman who wasn't getting any sex but desperately, abjectly sought it and was laughed at for doing so. The poor love.

Neither Inman nor Mollie Sugden, who played Mr Humphries and Mrs Slocombe respectively, had much perspective on how their characters mobilised homophobia and misogyny. Inman, who died yesterday just over a year after his civil partnership ceremony with Ron Lynch, his partner of 33 years, denied Mr Humphries was homosexual. He was the ultimate in-man, sending Mr Humphries back into the closet after everybody assumed the character, who was forever waving his proverbial tape measure at men's metaphorical inside legs, was gay.

Perhaps - here's a hopeful thought - Inman didn't recognise himself or his sexuality in his sitcom persona. If so, fair enough. Either that or he was complicit in the show's hidden agendas. Are You Being Served? wasn't innocent, nor did Inman's comic style, such as it was, work with much beyond homophobic suggestion. His writers shrouded fears of middle-aged women's desires and gay men's sexuality in fogs of implication - a cunning, if degraded, thing to do.

At its peak in 1979, 22 million viewers watched an episode of Are You Being Served? It was on for 13 years (1972 to 1985) and we were supposed to love its character-driven, stereotype-laden comedy of cruelty. I'm not sure we ever did.

In those days TV was rationed across three channels and, like spam fritters and powdered eggs, Are You Being Served? was as good as it got in those straitened times. We all watched questionable sitcoms and they brought us together as a catchphrase-quoting, difference-denying, hate-sublimating Britain. Even as many of us despised much of what we saw. Even as we watched in numbers scarcely imaginable in today's fractured TV milieu.

But viewing figures never meant audience endorsement; they meant there was nothing else on and we couldn't get out of our seats to turn the bloody thing off (we didn't have remote controls, you see). Such was 70s Britain.

This may seem funless musing on the death of a beloved icon, but there were a lot of us who weren't served by Mr Humphries and the rest of Grace Brothers' staff. When he minced into view, he served us, like the fetid Grace Brothers department store, with things that nobody really wanted. And when he shouted: "I'm free!" (a catchphrase linking homosexuality with sexual licence), some of us hoped that what he was offering would soon be past its sell-by date.

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